


echoes of time

by AslansCompass



Category: Sapphire and Steel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 17:59:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18057329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AslansCompass/pseuds/AslansCompass
Summary: Reflections on Sapphire and Steel from those who met them in the original series.





	echoes of time

_assignment one:_

Rob will never see eyes that blue again. He dreams about her sometimes, nursery-rhyme nightmares interrupted by a reassuring voice. The dreams become rarer as he gets older, but never fade completely. Ten, twenty years later, he occasionally wakes with "goosy goosy gander" or "the house that Jack built" running through his head. But always those eyes. When he's fifteen, he realizes he'd fallen in love with her. 

When he's twenty, he laughs at the idea. She wasn't even human! It never would have worked.

When he's thirty-three, he realizes "love" is the wrong word. One may as well speak of falling in love with the Channel, or Tudor England, or the Great Bear. Whatever Sapphire is/was, she's not a person. She's a myth, a force of nature, a personification. "Sapphire" wasn't even her real name. But it's the only one he knows. 

_assignment two:_

She misses the Man.  Like all her kind, she is a Cat-who-Walks-by-Herself; as long as food is in the dish and a cushion in the sunlight,  all is well in the world.  The neighbor fulfills all obligations. All is well in the world. 

_assignment three:_

They never speak of it again. Well, not technically. Both Rothwyn and Eldred are required to share the conclusions of the experiments with the authorities, but they refuse to mention it at home. 

One night, when they're going out for a ball, Rothwyn becomes distracted by a blue-stoned ring in her jewelry box. It reminds her of the woman, the blue-eyed woman and the cold man.  It makes her shudder. 

_assignment four:_

They can joke about Liz being camera-shy all they want, about bad hair days and bad first impressions. But that's not true. She knows that someone's out there, someone obsessed with her. No pictures, ever. 

_assignment five:_

Polite society doesn't discuss the circumstances of Dr. Dee's death. It's just not appropriate.  Especially not at a 50th anniversary celebration.

_assignment six:_

There's no one else there. No one real, anyway. 

 


End file.
